Lee Priest has been essential to the sport’s growth following his decorated tenure as a bodybuilder. Known for speaking his mind, Lee Priest appeared on the Appolon YouTube channel to discuss the impact drugs have had on the sport over the years.
“There will be a video there, ‘Fake natty and tren’ and that [does] 200,000 [views]. You put drugs in the title, everyone’s like, ‘Oh I gotta watch that it must be the secret.’ I’m like fu** me dead people, come on.”
Throughout the evolution of bodybuilding, steroids have become a cornerstone in sculpting champion-worthy physiques. Icons of their eras, like Dorian Yates and Ronnie Coleman, showcased colossal proportions and intricate muscle definition, establishing the benchmark for excellence in the IFBB Pro League Men’s Open division.
Priest competed for decades in the Open class, and while he didn’t boast the qualities of a typical mass monster, he made up for it with freaky fullness and compact muscle density. Having left the sport on top following three victories (2006 NOC New York, 2006 PDI Night of Champions, 2013 NABBA Mr. Universe), Priest never misses an opportunity to assess how athletes today utilize performance-enhancing drugs.
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Lee Priest Discusses His Testosterone Dose, Genetics & ‘Fake Nattys’ in Bodybuilding
While people often complicate it, Priest said bodybuilding is a simple sport and that there’s no need to “reinvent the wheel.”
“Some people come up with crazy stuff or do silly things and to me, really, when you look at bodybuilding or stuff like that it’s pretty basic, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. A bench press is a bench press. Some people might go well if you do it this way and lean on the ball and do that, anyone can make up bullshit to make it sound technical but doing the barbell curl, that’s a barbell curl.”
“Some people train and in their mind want to be Mr Olympia. I tell them, ‘Look if you want to be a top professional, that takes top genetics as well,” said Priest.“From day one till now, they’ve all done the basics. There’s none of this fancy shit. When you look at the guys back then, Arnold, Sergio Oliva, Bertil Fox.”“Look at the mass they had back then and they had basic drugs they weren’t into the growth hormone. They had maybe deca, test, dianabol, just the basics. Now everyone’s got these big ranges of drugs and they’re doing all these fancy exercises.”
“I was joking with him [Mike O’Hearn] I told him, ‘Come on Mike, it’s tren.’ People see the title, what it’d say, Lee calls Mike O’Hearn out.”
“People, I say look, he tells me he’s natty, I’ve got no reason not to believe him. Like I’ve said, I’ve seen him over those years, he’s always been consistent from when he was young right to now. People are like oh you’re a fucking idiot if you believe him. I’m like why can’t you believe him? It’s people too, they go to the gym and train and that sort of thing but because they can’t do it, they think if I can’t do it, you can’t do it.”“It’s like when I tell people I took 400 milligrams of test and I’ve done seminars, and I ask how much they’re on, they say, ‘1,000’, they look at me and go ‘You’re four times bigger than me and I’m taking 1,000. You’re taking more to be like that.’ Like I said, they don’t understand the genetics, what you’ve got up here, the fucking mindset, the heart, how much you’re going to sacrifice and push, it’s not just all about the drugs.”
“The internet can be a good thing but it can also be a shitty thing like that where people just throw shit out there. So when I go to the gym I’ve always said, if you have what it takes, it’s going to happen.”
“If you have the genetics and you have that mindset of this is what you want to do, give it 100% Go train. Eat your meals. Get your rest in. Don’t go out clubbing and don’t do recreational drugs.”
RELATED: Lee Priest Calls Out Olympia Show Organizers – ‘Why Can’t You Listen To The Athletes?’
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Even truth teller Lee Priest can’t tell that Mike O’Hearn is taking steroids. How did he bewitch everyone?